Olwen nodded; she had sent her "faire part" card home to Wales as a curiosity.
"It's to be down in Madame Leroux's own sitting-room; she says better so than having the party in the salle after the hotel visitors have had lunch," explained Miss Walsh, always breathless. "Oh, I feel I must go down and see if I can help her, but it is so difficult to understand when she will talk French so dreadfully fast——"
"Let me come too," entreated Olwen, eyes suddenly alight. "Let me help, do! I can generally make out even her fast French."
"Very well—if you ask her!"
Madame Leroux was talking faster French that morning than they had ever heard from her before. They found her in the basement, a whole region of the hotel that was unknown ground to Olwen, peopled by a tribe of workers whose sallow faces she had never seen before, and who were flying hither and thither on errands undreamt of on the upper floors. Even so the stoke-hole of a liner is unthought about on its polished decks.
The manageress was in the appartement that adjoined the kitchen, a domain smaller but pleasanter of aspect than any of the big rooms above, and more comfortable, except for one narrow space that was neither kitchen nor appartement. This space between the walls seemed to be a sound magnifier of the rumbling service-lift, the whistles of speaking-tubes, and the hissing and running of every water-pipe in the place. The door into the huge French kitchen stood open, giving a glimpse of marmites, burnished copper pans, crocks, and five-decker cookers; of vegetables piled haystack high, of ramparts of yard-long rolls, of twenty other kinds of provisions.
Beyond the kitchen a second door opened out into the cour, where buckets clanked, a tap splashed, and the whistling of a knife-cleaning machine could be heard. By yet another door Marie and Rosalie were bringing in chairs collected from bedrooms, attics, landings, and any other corner.
"May we both come in?" Miss Walsh asked timidly.
Madame Leroux turned.
"Ah! Enter always, Mademoiselle. It is not to all the world that I permit it—but for the little demoiselle of M. the Professor, but yes, but yes——To help? But certainly, if that gives her pleasure. One would have said that she would have preferred to spend the fine morning with M. le Capitaine in the forest, he with the one arm who admires her already——" Madame's glance was as swift as the dart of a chameleon's tongue after a fly.